At some point in my marriage, I don’t remember when, I did something which today both irritates and confuses some of my more strident female friends. Gradually, and mostly by accident, I handed over complete control of all my money to Mr Candy.

Right now, I have no idea who I bank with or how many accounts I may have. I could be in debt up to my eyeballs or have more savings for a rainy day than Richard Branson.

In the unlikely event I’m secretly richer than Bill Gates, I’d have no idea how to find the cash to buy first-class tickets to an alternative life in Rio with Hulio my new personal trainer.

Financially dull: Lorraine says handing her finances over to her husband was a skills-based decision, not a gender-based one (posed by models)

I’m stuck here because I’m financially dull: neither a big spender nor a bargain-hunting coupon collector. The monetary equivalent of Tim Henman, if you like. So it’s easier if I let my husband, a cash-flow genius, manage the family finances.

At work, I’m all over the magazine budget, yet at home I don’t give two hoots — so much so that I am monetarily powerless.

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Christine Lagarde, who runs the International Monetary Fund, would be appalled — as are some friends and colleagues.

‘That’s the kind of behaviour I would expect of one of those so-called surrendered wives,’ a workmate concluded this week when I casually confessed I can’t access my bank account online because I don’t know any of the passwords.

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Women are the main earners in 41 per cent of households in Britain, a rise of 26 per cent over 20 years, a 2013 poll found

A close friend worries Mr Candy could be leading a glamorous double life as a North London playboy with his access-all-areas VIP pass to my cash-flow, but she isn’t married to him.

He’s more risk-averse than Ed Miliband. He finds it hard enough to live one life. Two would blow his mind.

In almost every other area of family life, I am a control-freak, but how we spend what we earn is not my responsibility. I have washed my hands of it, like a mafia wife who doesn’t want to know where the bodies are buried.

‘You’re like a throw-back from the 1940s,’ another friend comments. ‘A feminist’s nightmare.’

I disagree. For me this is true equality, a sensible and strategic use of a team of two that has to juggle working with parenting four children. A division of duties underpinned by love and trust. Mr Candy is, after all, an expert in this area.

Rags or riches? For all Lorraine knows, she's richer than Bill Gates (posed by models)

I’d never do anything as foolish as put him in charge of buying the school uniform, for example, or the weekly supermarket shop, or bed-times: these go on for hours when he’s in charge.

Besides, I don’t care that I have no financial clout, even though it’s arguably more important than knowing how the washing machine works and who is in what club after school.

I’m surprised by some women’s negative reaction to this arrangement because it’s not gender-based. It’s skill-based, isn’t it? And to some extent choice-based. We do the things the other one really wouldn’t want to. It’s all about balance.

Anyway, I was heartened to learn this week of an American study which has revealed that, for the first time in marital history, couples are less likely to divorce if the wife is cleverer than the husband.

The theory of men being less threatened by the ‘wiser wife’ cheers me. Although, I accidentally once revealed to the children that I had no academic qualifications while Mr Candy had many (of the mathematical variety mostly).

As a result, annoyingly they defer to him every time there’s a quiz show on telly, glancing in his direction for answers — even when the questions are about 1980s soap operas, my particular guilty pleasure.

But my theory is that actually I’m much smarter than Mr Candy: a bit like Bill and Hillary Clinton. And thus it is fine for me to put him in charge of finances isn’t it? I’d be stupid not to.

Though occasionally I do wonder what would happen if he went through a mid-life crisis of epic proportions, as some men do. He might hotfoot it down to Rio with Hulio the personal trainer instead.